~ The Life of a Booklover

Book 4: Room – Emma Donoghue

Summary:
In many ways, Jack is a typical 5-year-old. He likes to read books, watch TV, and play games with his Ma. But Jack is different in a big way–he has lived his entire life in a single room, sharing the tiny space with only his mother and an unnerving nighttime visitor known as Old Nick. For Jack, Room is the only world he knows, but for Ma, it is a prison in which she has tried to craft a normal life for her son. When their insular world suddenly expands beyond the confines of their four walls, the consequences are piercing and extraordinary. Despite its profoundly disturbing premise, Emma Donoghue’s Room is rife with moments of hope and beauty, and the dogged determination to live, even in the most desolate circumstances. A stunning and original novel of survival in captivity, readers who enter Room will leave staggered, as though, like Jack, they are seeing the world for the very first time. (Source: Amazon)

Personal Opinion:I gave this book 5 stars on Goodreads. Yes, it was THAT good! What a marvellous book! It is so unbelievable and yet believable how Jack percieves the world. He thinks that everything that is not inside Room is only on tv and that the ‘outside world’ does not exist. It is hard to imagine to live this way, but for Jack this is ‘normal’. He doesn’t know any better. This makes it obviously even more shocking for him when he finds out that the world he sees on tv in most ways is real! He’s such a brave little boy and he made me laugh and cry multiple times while reading the book.

The little things that we take for granted, like feeling the wind blow in our faces or feel the warmth of the sun on our skin, is something that Jack doesn’t know. When he experiences them for the first time he gets confused and scared, which is totally understandable but also so sad. I loved how Donoghue makes the reader understand how the little things in life are BIG things for Jack. There are so many things he has to learn and understand, so much confusing and conflicting information coming his way, it’s just heartbreaking. However, Jack is such a lovable and cute kid, you just want him to do well. It’s weird to realize that his life in Room is NOT the traumatizing part of his life, it’s being in the outside world after 5 years in Room that makes things really hard for him.

This book really impressed me and I applaud Donoghue for the psychological insights that she gives her readers 🙂